Bibi’s Father’s Answer to the ‘Arab Problem”: Hang’ Em in the Town Square

Imagine, if you will, if Barack Obama’s real father was Rev. Jeremiah Wright and imagine, if you will, that Wright gave an eight-page interview to USA Today the week of Obama’s inauguration. Then you can imagine the “interest” with which such a Maariv interview with Bibi Netanyahu’s father was met in Israeli circles.

Noam Sheizaf, who works for Maariv, has translated portions of the interview in his blog (here is the original Hebrew story) and it’s an eye-opener to say the least. A bit of introduction about the elder Netanyahu and his political biography is important:

In today’s political world, Prof. Netanyahu will be considered an extreme right wing man. In fact, Prof. Netanyahu says that because of his views, he was never offered a teaching job in one of Israel’s universities (he is a world expert on medieval Jewish history). I tend to believe him. He was also one of the leaders of the US Zionist movement, and personal secretary to the founder of the Revisionist movement, Zeev Jabotinsky.

After reading this, you will understand why Bibi’s people tried for a week to get the interview squashed, even appealing to the publisher. The latter agreed to the unprecedented compromise of having Bibi’s brother review the interview to ensure it reflected his father’s real views (he is 99 years-old). We don’t know what role the brother played in the finished product. But after reading the interview and knowing a family member reviewed it, you can’t imagine how it could’ve been any worse.

The elder Netanyahu’s comments recall the racist anti-Arab remarks made by Rahm Emanuel’s father after his son was named U.S. chief of staff. And in truth, the elder Emanuel was, like Ben Zion Netanyahu, a follower of the most extreme right-wing nationalist elements of early Zionism. So it’s no wonder that their world view is replete with the worst anti-Arab racism and hate.

And without further ado, I give you, Ben Zion Netanyahu, the father of the man:

Netanyahu: “I don’t see any signs that the Arabs want peace… we will face fierce attacks from the Arabs, and we must react firmly…We just handed them a strong blow in Gaza, and they still bargain with us over one hostage… if we gave them a blow that would really hurt them, they would have given us Gilad Shalit back.”

Q: Operation “cast Lead” was one of the worst blows we handed on a civilian population.

A: “That’s not enough. It’s possible that we should have hit harder.”

Q: You don’t like the Arabs, to say the least.

A: “The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases.

The tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetuate war.”

…

Q: Is there any hope of peace?

A: …No…The two states solution doesn’t exist. There are no two people here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population… there is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a state for an imaginary nation… they only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews.”

Q: So what’s the solution?

A: “No solution but force… strong military rule. Any outbreak will bring upon the Arabs enormous suffering. We shouldn’t wait for a big mutiny to start, but rather act immediately with great force to prevent them from going on…

If it’s possible, we should conquer any disputed territory in the land of Israel. Conquer and hold it, even if it brings us years of war. We should conquer Gaza, and parts of the Galil, and the Golan. This will bring upon us a bloody war, since war is difficult for us – we don’t have a lot of territory, while the Arabs have lots of space to retreat to. But that’s the only way to survive here.”

There is valuable experience [on this matter] we don’t pay notice to. I mean the Ottoman rule over the Arabs. The Turks ruled over the Arabs for 400 years, and there was peace and quiet everywhere. The Arabs hated the Ottomans, but every little thing they did brought mass killings and hanging in towns squares. They were hanging people in Damascus, and Izmir… every town had hanging posts in its center…the Arabs were so badly beaten, they didn’t dare revolt. Naturally, I don’t recommend the use of hangings as a show of force like the Turks did, I just want to show that the only thing that might move the Arabs from the rejectionist position is force.

A word of context here. I don’t claim that Bibi Netanyahu holds the same beliefs as his father and I don’t believe (along with the Bible) that the sins of fathers are visited on the sons.

In fact, Bibi, unlike his dad, has few real principles of his own and would gladly shed any of his father’s if it would add to his political power. As I’ve written here, Bibi is a smooth operator, not a man of ideas. In a way, you have to admire the father for holding consistent and transparent views of Arabs. At least he says what he means. Bibi is much more wily and vacuous than that. He has few if any principles.

It is interesting to compare the current political power brokers of the Israeli political right who are scions of the Zionist radical right pre-1948 generation. All of them, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert, and Bibi Netanyahu have liberated themselves, to a greater or lesser extent from the purity and radicalism of their parents views. All have become political apparatchiks, rather than ideologues. Livni to a greater extent and Olmert to a lesser extent, developed a pragmatism that opened them to new ideas and turned them to the political center. Bibi remains stuck–without the purity of his father’s views, but without any openness to new ideas–on the extreme right. I suppose you could call him a pragmatic rightist, but only in the sense that he believes in very little the right stands for, except wielding power.

But what is interesting here is to see where Bibi’s ideas come from and to read them expressed in their purest and most virulent form. The younger Netanyahu is too slick to use the snarling articulations of his father. But everything the former does believe is rooted in this (the father’s) stifling, hate-filled world view. And while you will never hear Bibi call for eternal war and vigilance against the evil Arab foe as his father does, that is where Bibi’s policies will lead Israel. So in that sense there is a consonance in the views of father and son.

Thank you for saving me from reading the entire article; I think I’ve read all I need:
“There are no two people here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population… there is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a state for an imaginary nation… they only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews.”

I am hoping, really counting on Emanuel being an American Firster. Bad news, if not.

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April 4, 2009 3:26 AM

Moje

Ninety nine years old, eh? I don’t know if that is a blessing or a curse. But for someone so filled with hate, could be a curse.

I absolutely agree with your analysis, and that’s the reason I posted the interview (I just added some more excerpts, BTW). One should also remember that the father’s ideas are rooted in the world of the 30’s and the 40’s. He was actually one of the first Zionists to alert the US Jews about the Holocaust. His views are extremely ugly, but they are clear and consistent with his life experiences.

With Bibi – and the partners he chose for his government – all that remains is vulgar racism and a blind rejection of any sort of compromise.

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April 4, 2009 6:02 AM

Marilyn Shepherd

I have just finished 1967 by the excellent Tom Segev and feel sick to my stomach. All the years Israel has conned the world with the connivance of the US, all the crimes against the Palestinians with the help of the US.

One thing was interesting. In 1938 Australia refused jewish refugees from Germany on the grounds “we don’t have a racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one”.

In 1947 we only accepted Palestinians and not jews from Palestine, in 1967 we would only accept jews and not Palestinians.

After WW11 we invited 700 nazis because they look just like us.

Now we have a government that claims Israel was formed “from diplomatic efforts by Australia”.

But back to 1967, Eshkol, Ben Gurion, Dayan, Rabin. Not a decent and genuine person among the lot of them, just a bunch of criminal lying bastards ready in anyway possible to get the arabs out of their own land.

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April 4, 2009 7:54 AM

emman chehade randazzo

The hairs on my neck rose after I read this…what a sinister, dark, evil man the father is, his hate is suffocating. I have no further words……..

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April 4, 2009 8:07 AM

SimoHurtta

Part II is published on Promised Land and the professor is certainly not becoming more tolerant.

What me disturbs with this widespread Israeli thinking, which the professor represents in his “elegant” way, “Arabs understand only force and can be ruled only by force” is that doesn’t it mean that the same rule also fits with Jews. Hardly no other conclusion can be made. Can professor Netanyahu and others like him give any convincing moral “reason” why Jews outside Israel should not be ruled using the same strategy and means as Israeli Jews rule in Israel?

Well anyway it is good that Israel finally is showing its real “face” in form of Lieberman and professor Netanyahu. Both gentlemen say what has not before been said so directly but what in reality has been the core policy of Israel for a long time. The time of advertising “we are the victims” is over.

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April 4, 2009 8:08 AM

Walter Ballin

The racist views of Bibi Netanyahu are the same as his professor father’s, when one considers that he also is opposed to a contiguous Palestinian state and that he believes that Israel is entitled to uproot Palestinians and build settlements wherever it wants. The views of Netanyahu’s father are also the views of Olmert, Livini, Peres, Barak et al, by their actions. For political reasons, Bibi Netanyahu and the others just can’t express themselves the way Bibi’s father does.

That is one interview which will not be featured on the American MSM… ever…

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April 4, 2009 6:10 PM

DICKERSON3870

I recall seeing Netanyahu on the “Today” program in the early 80s. He was asked if there was any chance of reaching an agreement with the Palestinians. He said no because Arabs were incapable of fulfilling any agreement they entered into.

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April 4, 2009 7:01 PM

Miles Stuart

That’s really ironic.

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April 5, 2009 2:43 PM

DICKERSON3870

I believe that at the time of the “Today” program appearance referred to above, Netanyahu had just been made Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

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April 4, 2009 7:08 PM

Suzanne

Dickerson, I have also very heard the view,recently in Israel, yet in a discussion with more liberally minded, that Arabs are incapable of fulfilling any agreement they enter into. By now I suspect it’s a belief (a stubborn idea or truism) more widely held.

As well, Simohurrta makes the other point, about the belief that the only thing they understand is force.

I believe both sides feel the same about the other, maybe more strongly than ever now. The deterioration over the years of this conflict has penetrated deeply into both peoples. It’s depressing.

The very use of force and the resulting separation cements these feelings. I see it as a sickness.

———-

Why would this interview be of such interest if not to visit the sins of the father upon the son which, despite Richard’s disclaimer/ aside, is what is happening here. Not that it should not be done; not that perhaps it’s only an example of such extreme thinking more broadly embraced and buried in the closet.

After all, here is a man of 99 years, calcified, stuck in a hell of sorts (of hate). But I do believe you would also find these feelings, still alive and well nurtured in far too many of much fewer years. The results of this recent election in Israel indicate that is so.

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April 5, 2009 5:18 AM

DICKERSON3870

FROM “MONDOWEISS”: “…I must say that living in Haifa for half a year before this and seeing how the Israelis treated my Palestinian friends there made me really hate the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. I would go to restaurants and bars with my friends and I would walk through the door first and be welcomed, but when the hostess saw my friends she would say that the place was full, even though many empty tables were in plain view…”

Marilyn – As I understand it from ‘critical race theory,’ the perception that there was no race problem originated from the ubiquity of prejudice in favor of the white population at the time, a system in which the status of Jews varied as did that of other ethnic groups.

emman chehade randazzo, once you have become somewhat sensitized to the prejudice expressed, reread Noam’s comment above. Bibi’s father survived the second world war and afterward became a partisan in Israel.

A comparable view of the US might be present in Andersonville by Kenneth Roberts. I haven’t reread it in many years but having read it in my teens, it remains for me a template of man’s inhumanity to man.

This comment string has so much content. I’ll have to return later.

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April 5, 2009 5:36 PM

Margaret

Dickerson3870 – Your passion shows in your comments, which I have appreciated much lately.

To break this cycle of violence we need more engagement between all peoples. We then can see we are all human beings wishing for a life of love and peace.

Let us work towards this in our own unique positive creative ways.

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April 7, 2009 2:30 AM

Margaret

Richard – I’ve been doing a lot of skipping around. I come back here for a bit of rest and sanity. Yours is a site where people can come without concern that they will encounter hatred directed toward another commenter.

It’s a lovely bunch you’ve got here. Thank you!

Thank you, Benny Zable:

To break this cycle of violence we need more engagement between all peoples. We then can see we are all human beings wishing for a life of love and peace.

Let us work towards this in our own unique positive creative ways.

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April 7, 2009 4:49 PM

Youssed Ahmed A.

Bibi father’s interview is scary, yet informative. Two quick comments:
– It is interesting to note the real “enemy” from Bibi father’s viewpoint’s is Arabs — not Muslims. This has been a political conflict, not a religious one. Only in the late 1990s have Hamas gained proeminence. Something to keep in mind when some Bushists, Sharonists and other neocons depict the State of Israel’s colonial policy as a fight againt “terror”. Palestinians just want a state of their own. Palestinians just want independence, freedom, and the right to live with dignity. Exactly like the US did in 1776.
– Before so much hate toward Arabs (I’m humbly one of those non-human beings or Untermenschen — even worse I’m one of those Muslims), I can only have compassion and pity for the hater. What a DARK soul… I wouldn’t like to be in Bibi father’s place on the Day of Judgment when God asks him what good and bad deeds he did in his life. Be God merciful to him. Pity and mercy before so much hate is the only reasonable response.

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July 10, 2009 2:42 AM

sam barbary

I am curious why the New York Times won’t publish the Benzion interview Benzion Netanyahu is evil, vile and wicked. It’s embarrassing that Cornell welcomed him as a professor He spews the racism of all of most of Israel’s Prime Minister. The only one who had any compassion was Rabin. It’s interesting that the hateful remarks of Ahmandinejad are published in almost every major newspaper.

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February 20, 2010 6:01 PM

SD

Thankyou for publishing this, I think it is very very important and a topic which should be explored.

Maybe someone can dig up the open letter that Netanyahu senior published in the New York Times in 1947, in which he rejected the UN partition plan as a betrayal of the Jewish people?

Some people in Israel have privately expressed to me the view “Bibi will sign a peace agreement after his father passes away”.

But he got one thing right, he famously opined back in the 70s that his second son was a future foreign minister, but not prime ministerial material.

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